Robots In The Wild – Alpha Demo

Robots In The Wild is a quirky strategy game that combines elements of Tetris and classic tower-defense games to create an entirely unique and highly challenging puzzle experience.

In Robots In The Wild, you play as as a group of robots struggling to survive in space after your ship collided with an asteroid. The central components of your ship, Heart pieces, have been flung onto nearby planets and you’ll need to rescue each piece before the violent native monsters destroy them. To protect the Hearts, you will build turrets, batteries, and various other useful bots by dragging-and-dropping different shaped blocks together. Survive the night and you’ll be able to successfully retrieve the Heart in the morning.

At first, Robots In The Wild appears to have a wildly steep learning curve. From the get-go, you’ll be expected to create a multiple of different bots while contending with the novel controls and a steady influx of attacking enemies. However, once you get a hang of the basic concept, you’ll soon realize that battery and gun bots are the bots you’ll really need to create. Once you have a good vertical stack of guns, three or so high, most levels become a waiting game. Beyond this, Robots In The Wild has a few other not-so-great game design decisions, including cannons damaging the blocks placed in front of them, preventing you from building outwards, and the relatively complex shape requirements for building bots. The block layout for each bot must be matched exactly, so you’ll find yourself discarding blocks until you come up with the one you want. The puzzle/strategy mechanics for Robots In The Wild have merit; they just need some more tweaking and refining prior to launch.

Robots In The Wild has a very unique look to its art, emulating the simplistic, geometric style of Super Paper Mario. Adding to the charm is the game’s attempts at justifying its gameplay through its narrative. The introductory cutscene keeps tongue firmly planted in cheek, with fully voice-acted characters like the “Exposition Bot” popping up to rattle off a chunk of backstory before you begin the tutorial. For those looking for a side of comedy with their action-puzzling, Robots In The Wild delivers a full-course meal.